if you laid him out quickly and more or less completely. Also keeping an eye on the surrounding skeezer cohort, any one of whom may hurl themselves at you in wounded outrage the moment their beloved Mickster loses steam. So a single, decisive shot to the head is what’s required here. We want the Mickster down and out. We don’t want him reaching into his back pocket, signalling to one of his generals. We don’t want to prolong this process long enough, say, for Collie Chaisson to dash over to use the payphone at the Legion, give Mick’s friend Jeeves a call for example. We don’t want reinforcements, please god. The wrath of bikers, raining down on Icy Dream.
So we get this over with. And we don’t, we absolutely do not, give the little man bouncing around behind the glass his fun. We give him as little fun as possible — that is our eternal goal. Ditto the alky losers on the other side of the parking lot, hanging off one another in the doorway of the Legion, brandishing beers and smokes like cheerleaders’ pompoms.
The story of how we got to this point is stupid and — this is funny to say considering the freight-load of consequence it produced — inconsequential. That is to say, it doesn’t really matter how we got to this point. The point itself is what matters, the point of fist into face followed hard upon by head into pavement. The story leading up to that point is a story that could’ve lead up to nothing, or anything. It could’ve led up to me saying, “Croft, dude, buddy, seriously. Don’t pass around a hash pipe in our parking lot.” And Croft’s blue eyes lighting up with friendship and understanding. “Dude! For you? Anything.” And he and the boys restuff themselves into Croft’s toylike Ford Escort and away they trundle off to the drug den on Howe Street there to smoke and drink, crank the amps and play “Smoke on the Water” ’til their fingers tear open. That could just as easily have happened. I was a preferred customer after all. But no. Why? Guess why. Right.
Gord.
Yes, it has to be admitted, Croft threw down the gauntlet. He was a provocative little shit as I think I’ve already established, and a hair-trigger reactionary like my father was as catnip to him. There’s no question in my mind Croft wheeled his Escort into our parking lot that night looking for more than soft-serve and a place to smoke hash. This was a recreation for Croft and company — a field trip. This was like going to the park to play Frisbee.
It was a Friday night around eight o’clock when Chaisson wandered in. Not a bad opening gambit on Croft’s part, because Chaisson himself hadn’t done anything to explicitly offend my father except for chortle in Croft’s wake from time to time. He was Mick’s keychain — pure nonentity when he moved outside the outlaw circle. There was something dully universal about Chaisson in his ball cap, soft teenage waist spilling over his belt, face so obliterated by freckles you wondered how he could see through them all. He could’ve been any local doofus from any small town anywhere, stopping into the Icy Dream for a dollar sundae. Which is what he ordered when I moved to the till to intercept him.
Gord was in back washing trays, but not so far back he couldn’t have taken Chaisson in with the slightest turn of his head. I just had to hope that nonentity quality of Chaisson’s overwhelmed any association with Croft in my old man’s memory.
“Hey man,” said Chaisson, scratching his gut in a great show of nonchalance. Which caused me to glance immediately out the window and into the parking lot.
To see, of course, Croft leaning against his Escort, reaching over to hand a customer’s pipe back to him.
“Hot fudge sundae?” said Chaisson.
I turned back to him. “That it?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m gonna need you guys to take off out of the parking lot as soon as you get your food,” I told him.
Chaisson parted his freckled eyelids a little wider than usual and I got a glimpse of his weird burnt-orange irises, identical in colour to his hair. “Who?” he said, peering out the window. “I’m not even with those guys, man.” He had nowhere near the finesse of Croft when it came to this kind of bullshitting — didn’t come anywhere close to achieving the same sarcastic, fake-innocent flourish that